Arizona weekly enterprise., 1887-12-31
EARTH UPHEAvALS.
The Effects of Earthquakes Much Worse
 Than Those of Cyclones.

aware that since 1888 no less than 250 earthquakes have occurred in various parts of New England and the Atlantic States. Previous to the recent destruct- i've earthquake at Charleston the most severe shock known in this country was at New Madrid, Mo, in 1911. The ground rose in huge waves, which burst, and volumes of water, sand, and pit coal were thrown high as the tops of the trees. The forests waved like stand ing corn in gale of wind, and an area seventy miles long by thirty miles wide was submerged and became a swampy lake.
 On August 13, 1868, fearful earth quake took place in Peru, which laid waste much of the country lying be- tween the Andes and the Pacific. The shocks were felt through distance of 1 400 miles, north and south, and three important cities were destroyed. At Arequipa, in Peru, forty miles from the sea, a slight undulatory shock was felt, followed by others so violent that in five minutes not house was standing in that city of A, 900 inhabitants. A sub terranean rumbling, like the rush of an avalanche, was heard above the crash, and cloud of dust rose in the still air over the city. On the seacoast were situated Iquique ani Arica-both were destroyed by the shocks, and over- whelmed by tremendous wave. The ocean thus took up the vibrations of the land, and waves of tremendous volume were put in motion, which rolled. not only upon the coast. but away from it with velocity in the deep ocean of not less than 400 miles an hour, The great wave-for one was of much greater volume than the others has been estimated at upward of 200 miles breadth. with length along its curved crest of 8, 600 miles, This rolled into the harbor of Yokohama, in Japan, 10,500miles distant, and was felt at Port Fairy, in South Victoria, distant nearly one-half of the earth's circumference
 The opening and closing of Assures and chasms in the ground during earth quakes is common phenomenon. Men,
 
 swallowed in them and forever disap- pear. In 1S4S an earthquake shook large portion of New Zealand, and a Assure of great depth opened along a chain of mountains from one thousand to IT thousand feet high, extending sixty miles, but of not more than eigh teen inches in average width. During the Calabrian earthquake of 1783 the surface of the ground opened and closed in immense Assures, by means of which new lakes were formed and others drained or were dried up. Al Jerocarne the earth is described, by Sir Charles Lyell, as lacerated in an extra ordinary manner. ''Fissures ran in every direction, like cracks in broken pane of glass" In another instance, several dwellings were engulfed in Assure, and were found to be damned, with their contents, into compact mass. Chasms of immense length and depth were formed. Some were cres- cent-shaped. and d mile in length. The plains of Calabria were covered in many places with circular hollows from one footto three or four feet in diameter Some of these were filled with water others with dry sand.
 But changes in the earth's crust oc. cur during earthquakes, on a still grander scale. Evidences of local dii turbance, however disastrous it ma, have been. are often effaced if not for gotten in few centuries, frequently in few years. But the slow upheavaI of mountain chains and the dislocatioh of strata through profound depths are results which have been the subject of in. quiry by the world s leading geologists. Whether the central portions of the earth be fluid or not, it is quite certain that heat increases as we descend; and it is estimated by Sir Charles Lyell that the heat at depth of twenty-five miles would be sufficient to melt granite, and at thirty-four miles to render fluid or incandescent every known substance. We have no means of knowing the con- dition of matter under the enormous pressure which prevails at depth of thirty four miles, and are most con- cerned with the fact that the heat of fusion exists at no very great depth be- heath the surface. The earth's crust is, therefore, its cooled exterior
 It is found that nearly all rocks con tract by cooling and expand by heat. Lyell estimates that sandstone a mile in thickness, and heated to POO degrees Fahrenheit, would expand so as to lift a mass of rock upon it ten feet above it's former level; and if mass of the earth's crust equally expansible, fifty miles in thickness, be heated to 800 de- greeS, it would rise 1,500 feet From cooling we have the reverse effect shrinkage, contraction, lateral pres sure, and ultimately blending of the strata. The strain thus produced will at length cause fracture, and the vii bration that results is an earthquake. This form of tension is being continu- ally and everywhere produced in the earth crust, and there is probably no instant of time when that crust is en- tirely free from vibrations "There is nothing" observes Darwin, mot even the wind that blows, so unstable as the level of the crust of the globe. "-CAi- caqo Herald
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